Hacker News Reader

Do those accounts really manage to get "frost pist" status? Their replies often appear first when you open a tweet from president Trump, but I assume replies are listed in order by some popularity measure and not chronologically.

View on HN

This is very easy to verify, go under any big tweet and you can see that the replies are not chronological. It is indeed trying to use some sort of popularity metric. Having many followers that see and like your tweets would definitely help you get positions higher than random bots.

I didn't have any luck with search so I'd be curious to know what "frost pist" status is or refers to?

A (presumably intended, as in satirical) misspelling of "first post".

first post, but with some letters moved around, a popular form of discourse in general and as internet memes in particular

a google search does return some examples if you force it to

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="frost+pist"

Funnily enough, "forcing" that search prompts Google to suggest "frost post" instead. I might have done that originally and not noticed that Google pulled the rug from under me. Forcing "frost pist" showed some dictionary links for terms like "frost over" among some forum posts, that on closer inspection give away what you mentioned. That's what I get for skimming too quickly

Reply on news.ycombinator.com